TODD SEAVEY
author of Libertarianism for Beginners and writer of/speaker about many other things

Friday, November 30, 2012

BOOK/FILM NOTE: High Times, “Argo,” “Red Dawn,” and Occupy

•If you think yesterday’s blog entry (about Katie Pavlich’s
book alleging the government made no serious effort to track the guns sold in
Operation: Fast and Furious) was unsettling, considerthe darker theory pushed by Steven Hager
writing in the January 2013 issue of High
Times (I may be moderating a panel featuring one of their editors). He argues that Fast and Furious seems to have
been merely a case of the U.S. trying to aid one drug cartel against another (specifically, the Sinaloa against
the Zeta).

Legalize – not just in Colorado and Washington State but
everywhere – and this carnage, far more damaging than drugs themselves,
ends.

•In the meantime, who needs Red Dawn when we have a real war on the Southern border?

Nonetheless, I saw that goofy-but-enjoyable film this week,
along with the vastly superior Argo,
which is probably the best movie of the year – and close to my heart, since I
was one of the kids who read and believed the publicity back in 1980 for the
sci-fi movie that the CIA was pretending to produce in order to move in and out
of Iran.Though it’s not mentioned in Argo, they even hired comics artist Jack
Kirby back in the day to help plan god costumes and designs for an amusement
park, basing it all on the great Roger Zelazny novel Lord of Light, which is actually Hindu-influenced rather than
Iranian-influenced.

Speaking of which, in a sign of how much times have changed
since the original Red Dawn, the
group I saw the remake with included a libertarian Indian immigrant and a
couple guys, one a gung-ho Wall Streeter, who (really) train with guns and bows more because the U.S. government makes them nervous than because they
fear the North Koreans (or whoever).More strangely, it looked at one point as if we might be joined by a Russian-born
ex-broker who now works for the U.N.I’m
not sure she even saw the irony.

•Comparably politically eclectic is the cast of characters
from Occupy Wall Street who Bobby Black describes meeting in that
aforementioned January 2013 issue of High
Times.The movement began in
downtown Manhattan (mere blocks from the tall, twisty new Frank Gehry
skyscraper seen nearby in a pic I took), but as Black explains, by July 4,
2012, ten months later, it had convened a faux constitutional convention in
Philadelphia (about two hours away).And
they weren’t all just Marxist hippies.

Black, with a mixture of amusement and pride at being a
participant, describes the stubborn, wheelchair-bound but admirably anti-Americans
with Disabilities Act libertarian named Robert he met, as well as a
self-proclaimed dreds-wearing “conservative” named Kronos (not to be confused with
the giant invading alien
machine Kronos). Kronos was angry
that conservatives’ desires weren’t part of the Declaration-like agenda put
together in Philly. Bobby argued with
him at one point, defending the status of his own faith – Wicca – as a
religion, leading conservative Kronos to confess he is himself a pagan, helping
them to bond.

On that bridge-building note, let us look forward to similar
lessons in coexistence in the form of a few book and film entries during
December, which will be a “Month of Dogmatism” on this now lower-frequency but
still wise blog.